Welcome, Bob... you said:
> At the end of the Spring 1982 semester, I spent a fair amount of time
> locating many source codes for all kinds of things & programs I had
> written, programs my friends had written, and a lot of things I probably
> wasn't supposed to have access to. I made a list, and prepared to make a
> batch job to back it all up onto tape. My last night there, I submitted
> the job, and one of the last things I did before leaving campus that
> semester was go to the operator window to retrieve my backup tape. They
> had it there, with a big note on it "DO NOT RETURN". It took a little
> coaxing, but I finally got them to give it to me. I've still got this
> tape, although I don't know if it is readable, or how I could get the
> data off, or make use of it. I haven't seen any Cyber 170 simulators,
> and don't expect to find one anytime soon.
Sorry to quash your expectations, but three full Cyber emulators are
under construction, with a few others on hold. We have successfully
deadstarted the very old Chippewa Operating System, and we're working
through the NOS 1.3 deadstart right now. Summer looks good...
And I can help you find someone who can read your tape for you,
either myself or one of the members of the team.
Regards,
-doug quebbeman
control freaks list owner
Would anyone happen to have a spare of the card cage used to make the
TRS-80 Model 12 able to accept expansion cards? I have one that I'd
like to run Xenix on (with the help of a 68000 card)...
Thanks!
John
Forwarding only becuase I thought this might be useful to people on the
luist, no other reason at all. Contact the originator "Dennis" direct, off
list.
"Dennis" <dmison(a)elarasys.com> wrote in message
news:<7b927365.0205101254.2b5c5096(a)posting.google.com>...
> Company Info
>
> Elarasys Inc. is a leading systems consultant firm with over 20 years
> of experience in the IT industry. Our Commitment to Excellence
> provides each client with superior technical expertise groomed by
> years of experience, with the time frame they demand.
>
> About Elarasys Inc
> Elarasys Inc. is a leading reseller of pre-owned and pre-certified
> solutions. Our inventory includes the full line of IBM RS/6000, Sun
> Microsystems, AS/400, HP9000 servers. We also carry the latest in tape
> libraries, disks, monitors, and large printers All systems are
> extensively tested to provide our clients with the highest quality
> products.
>
> Our Commitment
> Elarasys appreciates our loyal customers and strive to keep them
> completely satisfied. We provide our clients with systems that are
> completely eligible for the original manufacturer's maintenance
> agreements. This entitles our clients to keep the same level of
> service from their existing maintenance provider. Our client's
> complete satisfaction is our number one goal, email me for quote.
As I mentioned in my PET message, my dad bought an Apple II while I was
still an avid PET user in high school. I tinkered with the machine a
little, but not a whole lot. When I was at U-Mass Amherst from
1981-1983, several friends had them in their dorm rooms, and I started
to become familiar with Apple II software.
While I was at college, my dad had gotten a contract to work on an Apple
database system called CCA-DMS. This was a clunky system written in
BASIC. The sorting function was especially slow, and my dad was
contracted to write a new sorting routine using 6502 machine language to
speed it up. Later on CCA-DMS was bought by VisiCorp (Personal Software
bought VisiCalc, and changed their name to VisiCorp, and made a whole
line of ?Visi? products). The new CCA-DMS became VisiFile, and was a
real clunker.
A friend of ours was doing a lot of mass mailing and wanted to put
together a software program that would combine a database for
maintaining name/address lists, and a word processor for writing
letters, and a program to merge the data into the letters. He wrote the
database and merge programs in BASIC, but there was no way he could
write a decent word processor in BASIC. He had seen a program called
?Magic Window? which moved the screen back and forth (the Apple II
screen was only 40 columns wide) as you typed so you could see your full
page. He liked that idea, and wanted me to create a simplified version
that worked similar. So I created ?The Letter Writer?, which was similar
to Magic Window, but simpler, and it was integrated into my friends ?The
Letter Carrier? mail merge program. I don?t think he sold very many
copies.
VisiFile was starting to get popular, but we hated how slow and clunky
it was. My dad improved the sort routine even more, and make a separate
program you could use instead of the standard VisiFile sort function.
Another function of VisiFile that was really awful was the reporting
function. The report generator was a huge program that could print a
report from a variety of specifications. My dad wrote a program that
would take the report specificiation, generate a BASIC program
SPECIFICALLY for that set of specifications, and run it. It was faster
to spend the time generating a BASIC program to print the specific
report, and then run that program, instead of using the clunky VisiFile
report generator. And the other advantage was that you could SAVE this
specialized report generator program, and simply run it whenever you
wanted to generate a new report from your data. My dad sold the sorting
program as FAST SORT, and the reporting program as FAST REPORT.
Another aspect of VisiFile that was clumsy was the data editing. You
could see one record at a time on the screen, in a form layout. It
worked OK for some applications, but if you wanted to see data from a
previous record (or records) you couldn?t. We came up with the idea of
showing data in a grid-like form, and in the summer of 1983 wrote MASS
MAINTENANCE. It worked on CCA-DMS or VisiFile format databases. You
could use it standalone, or replace the standard VisiFile data editing
program with it. We wrote it in 6502 assembler, so it was fast. I don?t
know if anyone else had used the grid metaphor before for showing data,
but we certainly hadn?t seen it anywhere ? we just came up with the
idea. Now, it?s the standard method for displaying tables, etc.
VisiCorp contracted with us to modify VisiFile to be Apple //e
compatible. They had a prototype Apple //e sent to us, which we used for
the project, so that VisiFile was Apple //e compatible when the Apple
//e was introduced. We were also sent a ProFile 5MB hard drive, and beta
versions of ProDOS. VisiCorp wanted to know if it was possible to
migrate VisiFile to ProDOS, and if so, could we do it. We started
working on the project, and did get much of VisiFile working under
ProDOS. In the meantime, VisiCorp went bankrupt and so the project never
got completed, and we never had to return the prototype Apple //e.
I do remember going to Apple user group meetings and everyone was
talking about seeing pictures of a hard drive attached to an Apple II.
It was awfully hard for us to be quiet, as we had one operational at our
house.
The ProFile hard drive had a head crash, and we lost our Mass
Maintenance source code. By that time, the IBM PC started to take hold
as a business computer, and the Apple II was used less for business
purposes. I got a real job as a programmer for a company, and our Apple
II software business quickly died out. The Apple II did continue to get
used until I bought a Macintosh in 1985. My dad continued to use the
Apple II for a few more years, but he didn?t do much in the way of
programming.
- Bob Lafleur
Springfield, MA USA
At the end of 1983 I got a job working at a bank developing an
accounting software package for the DEC Rainbow, and later the IBM PC.
The bank was the Farm Credit Bank, which provided financial services to
farms and farming co-ops. They marketed an accounting service for the
clients whereby the client could fill out forms with their income and
expense information, and other financial transactions, and mail it in.
It would be batch processed, and they?d get various reports back in the
mail such as check registers, income and expense statements, etc. The
system was good, but cumbersome to use due to the mail factor. The bank
decided they wanted to write a microcomputer version that could run on a
computer in the farm office. Pretty far ahead of it?s time in 1983, I?d
say.
Although I was primarily working on the account project, the bank?s
minicomputer was a VAX 11/780 (or two). We backed up our source code to
the VAX system, so I had some limited contact with the VAX. I was
intrigued, because I wanted to know how this VMS was similar, and
different from RSTS/E.
I became interested in working on the Technical Services team, which
were the guys who maintained and did all the technical stuff with the
VAX. Once we had a shipping release of the accounting software, they
allowed me to work half-time in Technical Services, more or less as an
apprentice. I latched on to a guy named Tom Vaughan, who taught me a lot
about VMS. One of our projects was to write a printer symbiont that
would allow one to submit a print job on one VAX, but have it print on a
printer connected to another node. This was before VMS offered any such
capabilities.
The Technical Services department also had a VAX 11/730 which was
designated to them for ?testing?. Well, it didn?t get used much, and Tom
didn?t mind if I used it for learning purposes. He let me set up a
privileged account on it, and I set up access so I could dial in from
home and ?play? at night.
I had always been interested in ?Talk? programs ? from the days of
RSTS/E, where there were ?good? talk programs, to the huge Cyber system
at U-Mass, to the programs of the online services like CompuServe?s ?CB
Simulator? which was primitive, but cool because you could talk with
people all over the country. I had used all these programs quite a lot,
and had things from each that I did or didn?t like. One of my main pet
peeves of almost every system was having other people?s messages come
across while I was in the middle of typing something.
I wondered about the VAX, and how I might go about writing a talk system
for it. Tom told me there was something called ?mailboxes?, and at
first, it took me a while to get over the term itself. I kept wanting
them to be related to the MAIL system. After reading some documentation
I had a few ideas of how I might implement a talk program using
mailboxes. I decided that a server process should keep track of
everything, and each user?s client would only interact with the server
process. I put together a small prototype, and the concept actually
seemed to work.
This was definitely a part time project, and it was over a period of a
few years (say, from 1985 to 1987) that I refined the program to a point
that I considered to be usable. Unfortunately, we only had 2 or 3 dialup
lines at work, and no one during the day was able to give the program a
good workout. I didn?t want to create accounts for friends and give them
access to my work dial-ups. The live testing was very limited. I decided
to post the program on the VAXFORUM of CompuServe and see if anyone
might want to try it out.
One day, in the spring of 1988, I got a call from a guy in Houston Texas
who was involved with a system called DATASEEK. At the time I thought he
was in charge, but I later realized that he wasn?t, I think he was just
a consultant. He said DATASEEK was a company that provided computer
services to the oil industry (or something like that) during the day,
but at night their computers weren?t doing anything, and they had a
system where local people could dial in, get information about local
restaurants, activities, etc. and it had a ?CB simulator? where they
could chat with each other. He said the current CB software was awful
and they wanted to replace it with something different. Could mine work?
I asked if he could give me dial-up access, and he said yes. That night
I uploaded the software to their computer, and we gave a few (maybe 2 or
3) users access. Testing quickly showed some bugs, and some desperately
needed features. I made some code changes, and they picked a handful of
avid users for beta-testing. Maybe 15 or 20 people had access to Talk.
They suggested more features, and I programmed them as fast as people
could request them. Eventually Talk replaced the old system, and it
became quite popular. Lots of people called DATASEEK just to use Talk.
The original intent of local information and advertising got obscured by
the desire for people to use Talk.
As Spring turned into summer, I was using the system a lot, and use it
to talk to people as much as develop Talk (well, using it was a good way
to learn what was good and bad). I made a lot of friends, and planned a
trip to visit Houston in late summer. DATASEEK was starting to complain
that their system was full all the time (they had 24 dialins, and they
would be consistently busy from 7:00PM when Talk opened, until 2:00AM).
They wanted some way to put limits on how much time users could spend on
Talk. There were a few other things I wanted to add that would be a
major change, so I planned to write them locally and bring the new
version when I went on my visit.
I had a wonderful week in Houston, and met a bunch of really nice people
who went out of their way to make me welcome. Of course, I was their
?hero? because I was the author of the software they were addicted to.
The installation of the new software went fine, although the time limits
DATASEEK imposed weren?t all that popular. But it did help give more
people a chance to use Talk.
In the Fall of 1988 DATASEEK decided they wanted to make Talk into a
subscription service. This didn?t go over well, as it?s hard to ask
someone to pay for something they?ve been getting for free. Some people
did subscribe, but the user base went way down. In the beginning of
1989, DATASEEK went away. I really don?t know what happened, and I was
never clear what their ?daytime? business really was.
I continued to play with Talk development locally for a while. I had
some features I was working on, such as linking multiple VAX Talk
servers together. I also had other ideas about making PC Talk clients,
and fancy version for VT100+ terminals. Some of this work is started,
but not completed. The node linking was hard to test, and I didn?t know
of anywhere that it would actually be used, so I lost interest in
finishing it. Without an avid Talk user base, it was less interesting to
work on Talk. My last version is dated 1990.
I did hear that a few other facilities were using Talk, although I don?t
know for how long, or how popular it was. I have totally lost contact
with everyone who used my Talk program at DATASEEK in 1988. I would love
to hear from some of those people.
In retrospect, Talk seems small in comparison to the networked IRC
servers of today. The most users I recall on Talk was 31, that was all
of DATASEEK?s 24 Dial-In lines, plus all of their local terminals. The
main thing about Talk was its user friendliness and ease of use, and
customizability. How does it compare with IRC and IM programs of today?
It doesn?t have fancy colors or graphics, but to just sit down and talk
with a group of people about whatever, I think it?s still a great
program.
I?ve recently set up a VAX system using SIMH, and Talk still runs under
VMS 7.3 just fine.
- Bob Lafleur
Springfield, MA USA
In late 1977, I began to hear about small computers that could fit on a
tabletop. My grandfather, who was a very generous man, used to take me
on Saturdays to various places, such as shopping, to the airport to
watch the planes, etc. and one day I suggested we might go check out a
new ?computer store? that had opened in Windsor Locks, CT (about 20
miles from my home). We went there several times, and marveled over the
computers they had for sale (I believe they initially had Altair
computers, and eventually started selling the Apple II). The Apple II
seemed quite interesting, but was also quite expensive (for a 14-year
old). Somehow we heard that a local store (called NEECO, which stood for
New England Electronics Company, and primarily sold calculators) would
soon be getting a new ?computer? in that was made by Commodore. Each
week or so I?d stop in and see if they had it yet, and each week the
answer was ?not yet, we?re still waiting?. Finally, they got one, and
they gave me a demo of it. I couldn?t believe how compact the whole
thing was, with the built-in monitor, keyboard and cassette drive. And
it had a BASIC programming language that I liked. Yes, the Apple II also
had BASIC (only Integer basic at that time, I suppose) and one of the
main reasons I really felt at home with the PET is because the prompt it
gave was ?READY?, which was like the RSTS/E prompt ?Ready? which I was
familiar with. It sounds crazy, but that one little word gave me a warm
feeling about the PET and made it so that I could identify with
something I already knew. The Apple II ?>? prompt seemed very foreign to
me.
I spent many Saurdays down at NEECO talking with the others who came to
marvel at the PET. The owners of the store were very generous in
allowing us to congregate there, and chat about computers in general. I
guess it was sort-of like a computer club, but we never formalized it as
such.
May of 1978 came. My grandfather came one Saturday, and I planned to go
on our usual trip to NEECO. But, my grandfather opened the trunk, and
out came my 15th birthday present, an 8K PET 2001 of my very own.
One of the things I really liked about having a PET was that it was MY
computer. I didn?t have to listen to some privileged system manager tell
me what I could or couldn?t do. If I wanted to try something that might
crash or lock up the computer, that was just fine. I felt in control of
the system.
NEECO did very well selling the PET computer. I believe they were one of
the main sellers in New England, as they had a printed catalog which
they mailed out, showing the systems, and software they had for sale. I
don?t know for sure, but I think they did a fair amount of mail order
business. Some of the people who spent their Saturdays at NEECO started
writing software that went into the NEECO catalog, and the author would
get a commission on every copy sold. One such program I fondly remember
was Hal Wadleigh?s ?WAR GAMES? package, which had 4 games; one was an
anti-aircraft firing game, one was a depth charge game, and I don?t
remember the other two. These were interactive games which made good use
of the PET graphics and I was awed by how someone could write a program
in BASIC to make these games work.
My dad and I wrote a game we called ?Masterbrain?, which was basically
the game Mastermind. We put that in the catalog for sale. I wrote a
shooter game I called ?Star Wars?, where fighter ships would come into
your screen, and you?d have to align the gun onto them and fire. I was
only 15, and I was very na?ve about things like name copyrights and
trademarks. I probably made a couple hundred dollars total on
commissions for the Star Wars game, but for a 15-year old in 1978, that
seemed like an awful lot.
One of the guys who spent some time on Saturdays at NEECO was Ted Scott.
He was not only a good software developer, but he was also an electrical
engineer and knew a lot about the hardware side of things. He developed
a device for the PET which he called the ?Music Box?. It connected to
one of the external ports, and had a speaker, and special software. One
of the programs actually displayed music on a staff and played it on the
Music Box. It was only one note at a time (monophonic) but this was
quite a while before people starting using the ?CB2 line? (I think
that?s what it was called) for sounds. The main difference between the
Music Box and the later CB2 approach was that by poking a memory
location, you?d only get a ?Click? out of the speaker, and you had to
write timing loops to get different pitches. The CB2 approach used the
6522?s internal registers to determine what frequency to generate ? just
set the frequency, and turn it ?on?, and then back ?off? when you wanted
the sound to stop.
One of the things the PET allowed me to do was go beyond BASIC
programming. I started to learn about things like 6502 assembly
language, and direct screen writing by store data into ?screen memory?.
I did a little hacking with the Music Box to figure out what made it
work. I then started writing my own 6502 routines which made sound
effects from the speaker of the Music Box. I incorporated some of these
sound effects into a newer version of my ?Star Wars? game and advertised
it as supporting the Music Box for sound. As I recall, I don?t think I
ever asked Ted Scott for permission to do this ? I just did it. But, I
didn?t use any of his code ? just used the hardware if it was there ? so
I may have sold some Music Box units for him.
I wrote an awful lot of other programs for the PET. Many of them were
just tinkerings, but they helped teach me many concepts about
programming and computers. I got very interested in writing 6502
routines that could be called from a BASIC program, to do things faster
than BASIC could do. I didn?t have a 6502 assembler that I liked ? the
only one I had was tape based, and very cumbersome to use. So I learned
to hand-assemble 6502. At one point, I had a good portion of the
instruction set memorized. I could disassemble 6502 instructions in my
head, and have a good idea of what a routine might do just by looking at
the hex opcodes. One of the things the PET did not support was
?blinking? text on the screen, yet it had normal, and reverse letters.
One of my neatest routines I wrote (in my mind, anyway) was a routine
that would create blinking text. There was an area in memory where you?d
POKE in the start row/col and length of the text you wanted to blink,
then activate the routine, and it would cause that area to blink
steadily (?in the background?). The routine hooked itself into the video
interlace interrupt on the PET. You could change the flashing areas
simply by POKEing new values into memory.
One of the other programs that I wrote and sold through NEECO?s catalog
was a word game called ?PROBE?. The basic idea was that each player (the
human and the computer) would pick a word, and then try to guess the
other player?s word. I entered a whole bunch of words from the
dictionary for the computer to use, and also did some analysis on these
words to give the computer some smarts when making guesses. For example,
if the opponent had a ?T? showing with nothing before it, the computer
knew what the most likely letter to precede ?T? is, and it would guess
that. If that failed, it might try the second-most likely letter to
precede ?T?, or see what other letters the opponent had showing and try
to guess a letter before or after that. The logic worked quite well, and
many games were evenly matched.
One of the neatest things I recall is that Ted Scott took apart a Texas
Instrument ?Speak & Spell? game and created an interface between it and
the PET. He created some software that would access the Speak & Spell?s
vocabulary and the computer could cause it to talk. He loaned me this
modified Speak & Spell for a few days, and I modified my PROBE game to
speak the letters as they were guessed. Could this possibly have been
the first TALKING game?
My dad and I worked on a Backgammon game. We devised a routine for the
computer to make educated moves. I was the ?graphics guru? and my dad
was the logical thinker, so we worked well on this project together.
Unfortunately, the 8k PET memory didn?t give us enough space to refine
our backgammon playing strategy as much as we wanted. Fortunately, a
company called CompuThink was coming out with a memory expansion board
that you could mount inside the PET to expand the memory up to 32K.
NEECO ?loaned? (that?s what they said, but I often wonder if my
grandfather purchased it) us a 24k expansion board to refine our
Backgammon game. The CompuThink board also had 2 expansion ?slots?, and
they soon came out with a floppy disk drive that you could plug into the
board. This drive was out before Commodore?s floppy disk drive. I got a
CompuThink disk drive which made my life much easier. Many ended up
buying the Commodore disk drive, but I much preferred the CompuThink
dual drive system for the PET.
My dad got frustrated with not being able to get enough time for himself
on the PET, and ended up buying an Apple II for himself. At first, I
didn?t pay much attention to the Apple II, but over time I became
intrigued with it?s graphics, capability to run a modem (which I
couldn?t do with the PET), and a friend asked me to write some software
on the Apple II for him, so the PET started to get less use. NEECO moved
their store from Springfield to Needham, MA (near Boston) and our little
Saturday informal group more or less broke up.
I still have my PET, although I?m sure it is not operational. I did have
some power supply problems at one time, which Ted Scott fixed. It ran
fine for a while, but I believe the problems came back and that?s when I
finally stopped using the PET. It has probably developed other problems
that would keep it from running now also. I don?t think the CompuThink
memory board is installed anymore, but I probably still have it. I know
I still have the CompuThink disk drive. I can take some pictures of this
equipment if anyone is interested.
I?ve been able to restore some of my games that were saved to tape into
a current PET simulator program by playing the tapes into a PC
soundcard, and having a decoder program decode the sound on the tapes
and store it in disk files. Unfortunately, most of my later (and better)
PET work was saved on floppy disks. I believe I still have the disks,
but have no idea if they still contain data, or how to go about getting
them read into a PC.
The programs I know I have recovered are PROBE, STAR WARS, and some
version (I?m sure not the ?latest and greatest?) Backgammon.
- Bob Lafleur
Springfield, MA USA
Hello,
I've recently found this classic computers mailing list and I'm
pleasantly surprised at how active it seems to be. I've been browsing
sites related to computer history, classic computers, and emulators for
a while now and have found a lot of interesting information, but this is
the first active discussion group I've encountered.
I am going to send several messages to the list regarding my experiences
with various systems. These messages will in a way, introduce me to
other list readers, and hopefully spark some discussion. I will try to
keep the messages at a higher level describing who I am, where I came
from, what I've done, etc. but would be happy to discuss anything in
more detail either on the list, or privately via E-mail if it doesn't
seem appropriate for the list. I?m also hoping these messages might lead
me to some long lost ?friends?.
I'll break my experiences up by computer system so that if you're not
interested in a particular system, you don't have to read the message.
I?ve tried to recall everything as best I can, but sometimes there are
gaps of things I just don?t remember, or didn?t recall exactly right.
It?s been a long time?
My E-mail address is: bob_lafleur(a)technologist.com; please feel free to
write me on any topic that may stem from my messages.
- Bob Lafleur
Springfield, MA USA
only place i've found with a stock so far is jameco, and they want $2.50 a
piece for them :(:(:( I need to fill out some old HP laserjet memory
boards.....
any suggestions on sources?
>I already have a S/23 but what I am really, really desperate for is the
>I/O card for the 5246 external dual floppy disk drive. If
>you have the drive, you have the card. Do you have the drive?
I don't believe so.
If I am correct, all I have are the all in one units, and one tower unit.
All of which have built in dual floppies, no external floppies.
The only accessory I ever had for them was the printers.
>Also, do you have any software applications for the S/23, or more
>importantly, any games?
I will dig thru my software and see. I doubt I have any games, but the
accounting program we were running was a custom written application, so I
might have some kind of development system for them. The programmers were
on staff, so I would think if they used anything special, the company
owned it, and so I might still have it kicking around.
I'll try to take a look this week (I need to make a decision on the
systems soon anyway... the landlord is due in town, and he gets REALLY
pissed when he finds I am blocking the hall with computers, so if I can
reduce clutter by these monsters, I am all the happier).
I at least know I have a few people on this list interested in them if I
can't find buyers (I will probably try to eBay one of them and see what
happens... I have to think out shipping logistics, I don't want to ship
to a buyer and have it be trashed when it gets there).
But no matter what, it looks like they won't have to hit the trash, so I
am happy.
-chris
<http://www.mythtech.net>
Does the IBM System 23 hold any value these days?
We FINALLY are off them (had one last application still running up until
about 2 months ago). So I can now start unloading the ones I have.
I am trying to decide if I should eBay them, or just give them away, or
<shudder> throw them in the dumpster.
I have 3 or 4 of the "all in one" units (screen, keyboard, dual 8"
floppies all in one box), and I have one "tower" unit (dual drives in a
tower box, screen and keyboard are seperate parts). I also have 3 or 4
printers.
Beyond the above descriptions, I know almost nothing about these things,
and almost as little about how to operate them... so they aren't
something I really care to "collect".
I will probably hang onto the tower unit and one printer (at least for
the next 7 years, just in case the IRS comes knocking and we need to get
info off the old software)... it was the last unit in service. The others
were being held as spares in case the tower died, but since we finally
got our one accounting application migrated to another system, I can
afford to get rid of the spares.
Anyone have any idea if I can got money for them, or should I just be
happy to find a home other than the big metal box the "dustcart" (<- too
much GTA3) collects twice a week.
-chris
<http://www.mythtech.net>
